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New ‘cop shop’ has room to grow

Fruita Police Officer Bob Bomar points to a photo that shows what is on the other side of the lockers that lead to the new evidence room at the freshly renovated Fruita Police Department building. New holding cells, locker rooms, lobby, conference rooms and more have expanded the police department’s space from the previous area of 5,834 square feet to 11,228 square feet at a cost of $1.5 million.

It’s been several years in the making, but the new and improved Fruita Police Department building is finally done.

The department, which held its open house for the expanded facility on Friday, had been in cramped space for some years now, said City Manager Clint Kinney.

The new facility not only accommodates the department’s current needs, but has room to allow it to grow as needed, he said.

“We remodeled the existing space and added square footage, and then remodeled what was a community room,” Kinney said. “So it was a combination remodel and expansion.”

With $1.2 million saved up for the last several years, the department now has an 11,228-square-foot facility complete with a new evidence room, showers, office space and lockers for the department’s 22 officers.

Previously, the department was a fraction of that size, stuffed into about one-third of its current space.

The building also replaced the two chairs that used to make up its lobby, and now has a real lobby, Kinney said.

“It fundamentally will allow them to do their jobs better by having access to equipment, more interview rooms, and space for patrol officers to actually write reports more effectively, and just having more operational space for the necessary office work that needs to be completed in law enforcement,” he said. “This had been a high priority for a number of years, and now we’ve got it done.”

Kinney said that now that this project is completed, the city can focus on its next major project, expansion of the city’s public works and parks department.

The work become necessary because of a boom in the city’s population, which has doubled to more than 12,000 residents since 2000, but was possible thanks to the city’s burgeoning economy, Kinney said.

“We’ve been knocking off a number of capital projects,” Kinney said. “The civic center was done about 12 years ago, we’ve done the community center, and the new police department. Now, we’ve got public works and parks shops next on our goal to get these facilities.”